Early Days
by Random Guise
Summary: This is a conversation that I imagine took place during the 1984 movie "Runaway". Tom Selleck's character is describing his career to his new partner as they drive between scenes. I don't own these characters or a robot nanny.


**A/N: A conversation that takes place during the 1984 movie "Runaway", as the two main police characters drive out to the high-rise construction site.**

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Early Days

Sgt. Jack Ramsay grew uneasy as the squad car drew near to the high-rise that was the scene of their call. His new partner, Officer Karen Thompson was starting to believe that she was the reason he was uneasy and tried to decrease the tension as she drove. "What were some of your early cases?" she asked.

Glad for the diversion, Jack smiled as he rode along. "Keep in mind, there was no 'Runaway' unit back then. Police officers are meant to protect the public from harm; usually that means the bad guys, but we also serve during natural disasters and other times of crisis."

"Like the big blackout four years ago when they put all the officers on the street."

"Exactly. So, automation has been developing over time. It started out with just simple machines that had to be manually operated; you put your food in a blender and push a button to get it chopped up. Then with advances in electronics, computers and programming we've designed machines to be more and more independent or at least able to do more steps without intervention. But like anything, the more complicated it gets the more likely something is going to go wrong."

"That should be a job for a mechanic or an engineer" Karen observed.

"For the most part, yes. But what happens if the public safety is threatened? Take for instance a streetlight. Most of the time they work fine and traffic flows through with nothing more than an occasional fender bender. But if that programming goes haywire, that intersection becomes dangerous and people can get hurt or worse; it might even jam up and start a system of gridlock that will prevent other emergency services from operating. So we send down a cop to direct traffic while that engineer you mentioned works on the light. We keep the public safe."

"I came over from Traffic, remember? I've stood in the heat and the rain waving people through. That doesn't qualify me to be a special unit officer, though."

"No, it doesn't. That traffic light is just going to sit there and blink or not blink. What if it started moving around?"

Karen started to giggle and then stopped. "Sorry."

"I know, the image is a little ridiculous. But if you mobilize that chaos, it elevates the danger. If the pole starting shocking people or running into them, more danger. So at some point the police department formed a specialized unit to handle those types of situations when they came up."

"So what was your first 'runaway' case?"

Jack laughed at the memory. "A toaster."

"A toaster?"

"Yeah, the department got a call from an elderly lady that was being assaulted by toast every morning. She insisted it was out to get her, so they sent me as a response. I think it was more public relations than anything, but I responded."

"Was it evil?" Karen giggled again.

"No, and it was barely even what you might call a smart toaster. It turns out the whole problem was a spring that was too tight in the basket lifter. No programming involved, all I had to do was cut the spring back and stretch it a little before reattaching it. She was happy, and the department looked good which made the Chief happy. We got a few calls for home repair after that from her friends, but we referred them to a real fix-it service. Man, it seems like a lifetime ago even though it's only been a few years; my son Bobby was a lot younger and Marvin had just started working here."

"But the users can be the problem too" he went on. "We had a case of a smart mower that was mowing the whole neighborhood, including flower beds. It turns out the owner input the wrong yard dimensions by a factor of 100."

"How did you stop it? By cutting the power?"

"It was solar powered, but the energizer had almost a full charge. Luckily, it was programmed to shut down in the dark for noise purposes so we threw a blanket over it."

"What else? Have there been any problems from faulty programming?"

"Of course; programmers aren't perfect. We had one of those automated vacuum cleaners, a 'Voomva 5' go after a citizen's cat. It was interpreting the cat as just a large hairball based on a glitched size parameter. Fluffy made it out okay; don't worry, Kid" Jack assured her.

"Anybody ever vandalize a robot?"

"Of course, but it takes a certain level of knowledge and means to be able to do that beyond some kid spray painting over an optical pickup or blocking the wheels. I had a case in a warehouse once where a firefighting robot would activate and spray down a particular employee whenever he walked into the plant."

"Really? The same person each time?"

"Yup. After I did interviews I kind of figured out why; the guy was a supervisor that had a really nasty attitude. So we took a look at the programming and found that several employees had reprogrammed it to recognize his RFID badge when he walked in. One of them left a fingerprint on the main board and he confessed everything after we confronted him with the evidence. If they had programmed it to spray down other people randomly it would have been easier to hide as just a malfunction."

"Have you ever stopped a runaway that killed someone?"

"Yeah" Jack said, and he stared straight ahead as he rode without elaborating.

Karen thought about asking him more about it but decided against it. She almost changed the subject when Jack continued. "It was an auto-cab. Something went wrong with the nav-controls on it and it tried to make a u-turn in the middle of a freeway to pick up a customer. The trouble was it already had a customer inside of the damn thing which should have locked out the response to begin with, but somehow it glitched and turned right in front of a big rig. It, um, killed the passenger. That's when my wife died."

Stunned, Karen had no words.

"It kept trying to drive even after the accident, dropping...things...as it went until we shot out the tires and I pinned it against a guardrail. But that was a while ago, and none of them have been that bad since" Jack said as he managed to smile ever so slightly. "It's our job to keep that from happening to anyone else."

"We're coming to the site now," Karen said with relief as she looked out the windshield. She looked up. "It's that tall building over there."

"Great."

I wonder if I could still keep going after what Jack went through, Karen thought to herself as they pulled up along the chain-link fence with a sign that read "Caution - Human & Robot Work Area".

The End

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**A/N: Did I mention I hate needles?**


End file.
